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Germany
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Foundation

Hotel
Vacation
Digital services

The German Youth Hostel Association (DJH) is a non-profit registered association with more than 2.4 million members. Through its regional associations, it operates around 500 youth hostels in Germany.

This makes the DJH the largest provider of youth accommodation and the largest member of the international youth hostel association Hostelling International (HI). Youth hostels are accommodations for (especially young) people who want to discover the world, experience community and broaden their horizons regardless of their origin or financial means. Altogether 14 national federations and 178 honorary active local and district federations unite to the main federation, which has its seat in Detmold.

The Task

The contract included the relaunch of the existing website on a conceptual, technical and front-end level as well as long-term technical support. In addition, a new possibility was to be created to be able to book the entire product portfolio of the German Youth Hostels online via the website.

Since the DJH consists of a complex system of headquarters, regional associations and youth hostels, it was a challenge to link these three levels in one system. Another important criterion was the integration of tracking tools in order to measure and analyse success.

Implementation and Result

The neusta eTourism team was responsible for consulting in the areas of SEO and Google Analytics. As a result, neusta eTourism conducted various workshops together with DJH. The concept and design for the website was provided by DJH itself. The technical implementation was then carried out by neusta software development: A diverse editorial TYPO3 section was integrated into the new website in order to make the homepage individually usable for all associations of the German Youth Hostels. Subsequently, the selection of products in the online booking was expanded.

The challenge now was to tailor several technical areas to each other and bring them together: Various frontend technologies, the new TYPO3 editor environment, as well as the systems of the German Youth Hostel with their extensive price, text and image data via the REST API interface architecture of the .NET platform (C#). Due to the special technical challenges, the DJH website is a long-term project with a dynamic system: for two years the teams have been entrusted with the development and continuously optimize the system. A beta version of the website went live in the summer of 2017. The finished website launched in March 2018.

The German Youth Hostel Association (DJH) has a completely new website: the website is based on a new, dynamic and open system that can be constantly expanded with new features. The complete product range can be booked online by the user and no longer needs to be individually requested. team neusta is happy about the cooperation with the DJH: support and service by neusta software development and consulting by neusta eTourism are ongoing.